Preen by Thornton Bregazzi / Fall 2012 RTW

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Hang on, what season are we in? One effect of having to do so many collections a year—designing new things, continuously, with scarcely a pause to recharge—can be an encroaching detachment from the real cycle of the seasons. And then again, the weather doesn’t do what the weather’s supposed to do any more. Upshot: We’re all confused. And Preen by Thornton Bregazzi, for one, seemed to forget they were doing a winter collection—or at least, they don’t seem to be taking the prospect of wrapping up against the cold seriously. Their collection contained precisely two coats.

Instead, Justin Thornton and Thea Bregazzi’s fall show read as a continuation of their signature designs—the dresses they do with differing fabric in front and back, the blouses, the slim pantsuits—but in a more minor key than the stellar show they pulled off for spring. Bregazzi explained before the show that their prints had evolved after looking at Beatrix Potter’s botanical drawings, Victorian pressed-flower albums, and abstract expressionist art—Jasper Johns, Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock. But the couple aren’t the types to belabor the meaning of a mood-board. Really, their business is knowing what women in their 30s and 40s want in their wardrobes—day-to-evening versatility, mixes of patterns and fabrics that don’t commit a garment too firmly to one context or another. Preen things glide from place to place, as they do season to season, without raising any questions about their appropriateness.

Thornton and Bregazzi have a knack for this, and they’ve been coming up with some really exciting pre-collections recently. By comparison, their fall runway show lacked the mesmeric, sequenced excitement of the beautiful lemon, pink, and pale blues in their spring collection. There are still lovely items—the bold blue brushstroke-printed silk blouse, a pantsuit color-blocked in deep blue and brown—but there was a sense, in the end, that the designers hadn’t used this season to put a great deal of thought into mapping out where they’re going next.